Do Not:

Feel ashamed; addiction is not a moral choice, so it should not shame anyone.

Lie about cause of death; your loved one deserves a medal for fighting an enormous enemy even though the battle was lost.

Hate: if your loved one was addicted for a long period, he or she probably introduced someone to drugs, sold drugs, and lied to get drugs. Others involved in the first or final blow are just as likely to die, and more death is not the answer. Love and forgiveness will open a way for you to heal.

Do:

Inform the Public

Ask local media to headline the tragedy.

Highlight this person’s real (before addiction) personality.

Tell people what this person would like others to understand.

Explain how the addiction first began and then progressed.

Warn others that addictive substances kill valuable people.

Describe how you feel, what you learned the hard way, and what you would like changed.

Connect people in need with people who are supportive and informed

Point out when others use insulting or simplistic terms for a complicated problem: junkie, loser, scumbag, tested dirty, etc.

Work to redefine the problem using words that accurately link addictive substances together, not just drugs given by doctors versus drugs sought out illegally.

Defend people with addictions so that others will approach them with support and not an egotistical attitude.

Connect with the friends of the deceased person because they might be the next to die, and they are just as human, trapped, hurting, and scared.

Befriend people with addictions by asking and listening without judging or lecturing because they need to feel accepted, loved, understood.

Reach out to other families who are trying to save their loved ones; you know how alone they feel, and you might be able to help them avoid the pain you are feeling.

Campaign for change

Write to anyone you can find in power and demand policy change.

Explain how the system made getting help difficult or impossible.

Explain how judging substance addiction is the real problem.

Grieve

Reach out, join groups, and find support.

Cry. You didn’t deserve this!

If you the reader can add to this list please do. I have been rethinking my son’s death for 4 years, and I made many mistakes in what I should and should not have done. Looking back I wish someone told me what to do, but instead I felt numbed by the singularity of my experience. Part of the numbness was due to the lack of any discussion by those who had lost someone due to overdose. Another big reason for my tendency to grieve alone was the stigma of addiction and death by an illegal substance. Once I started reaching out, the people with addictions themselves were my saviors. So, don’t make the mistakes I made, and add anything you learned so I can update this list for the next poor soul who stumbles upon this post.

Like this:

I would like to throw a wrench into this disease definition machine. I am one of the few you will hear that cringes when addiction is explained as a “disease”. This term or definition is erroneous, simplistic, and undignified in my Aristotelian formed opinion. On one hand, the definition is needed so that people can receive insurance benefits for treatment, so in that it is pragmatic. However, if we continue to define how people suffer in current evolutionary terms, we will never truly arrive at the fully understood solution. Addiction is not a simple disease, and we cannot approach it with a medical cure or vaccine. The idea that everything has a medical solution, and that being a chemical or genetic cause, is archaic and harmful to the advance of human health initiatives. Not only is this term negating the cause and affect of addictive substance reaction, the term is allowing for more of these substances to enter into profit margins and sales campaigns.

People who are experiencing addiction did not catch a virus, do not have faulted DNA, and do not have abnormally growing cells; they have been poisoned. They were formed and progressed normally through childhood. When they experienced a substance that affected their system more profoundly than in the other 80% of the population, they experienced a euphoria that others may not comprehend. Without the poisonous substance, they would not be in bondage to a feeling that others do not experience.

The definition of ‘diseased’ adds to the stigma of imperfection and in need of medical intervention pervasive in modern society. The medical system is to blame for placing these substances on the market, yet they blame the victims for being diseased. People with substance addictions are in bondage to medicine, chemicals, or whatever else enters their systems, and they were unaware of the risks because pharmaceutical companies hide or disregard the euphoric feeling a large portion of our population experiences. Once this feeling is experienced, the individual cannot find anything in life so pleasing. Some individuals are wired with different endorphin receptors, it is that simple. By calling this phenomenon a disease, we are allowing society to label a reaction to poison as the fault of the individual who ingested it due to a diseased system. This “epidemic” (another disease reference used to describe the death rate from opioid overdose) is not so simplistic as saying someone’s system is not operating correctly. This is a rewiring of their whole system. Addiction is a form of bondage, and the companies who produce and market this poison should not be allowed to blame the consumer for putting heroin, a known and banned substance, in our general population.

Consider this: Heroin and opium were banned because of the damage they do to a population (i.e. China). Pharmaceutical companies are selling more heroin and opium under the pseudonym “opioid pain relievers” without any blame. How do they do this? They blame the consumer for being diseased and keep many in bondage by providing more chemicals to ease the long recovery period, around 2 years on more opioids.

Consider this: Someone who deals heroin on the street can receive years in jail, yet any doctor can prescribe the same doses without a court order. Someone who accepts heroin on the street will be entered into the penal system with a searchable record, yet this same record will make finding employment or housing almost impossible. Most medical professionals have employment and comfortable housing.

This is not a diseased individual but a diseased system: American sells heroin with the properly signed documentation, becomes disgusted when individuals experience total loss of facilities to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, penalizes individuals for trying to avoid the pain of withdrawal, gives more heroin for pain avoidance to individuals with bouts of pain, and then defines anyone who cannot stand face to face with heroin/opiates/opioids/Vicodin/Oxytocin/oxycodone/etc. and win as diseased.

Like this:

“The stronger this faculty is, the more necessary it is for it to be combined with integrity and supreme wisdom, and if we bestow fluency of speech on persons devoid of those virtues, we shall not have made orators of them, but shall have put weapons into the hands of madmen”-Cicero, De Oratore III: xiv. 55.

Changes for special vehicles now in service at Kulmhof (Chelmno) and for those now being built

Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed [verarbeitet in German] by the three vehicles in service, with no major incidents. In the light of observations made so far, however, the following technical changes are needed:

[l.] The vans’ normal load is usually nine per square yard. In Saurer vehicles, which are very spacious, maximum use of space is impossible, not because of any possible overload, but because loading to full capacity would affect the vehicle’s stability. So reduction of the load space seems necessary. It must absolutely be reduced by a yard, in­ stead of trying to solve the problem, as hitherto, by reducing the number of pieces loaded. Besides, this extends the operating time, as the empty void must also be filled with carbon monoxide. On the other hand, if the load space is reduced, and the vehicle is packed solid, the operating time can be considerably shortened. The manufacturers told us during a discussion that reducing the size of the van’s rear would throw it badly off balance. The front axle, they claim, would be over­ loaded. In fact, the balance is automatically restored, because the merchandise aboard displays during the operation a natural tendency to rush to the rear doors, and is mainly found lying there at the end of the operation. So the front axle is not overloaded.

2.The lighting must be better protected than now. The lamps must be enclosed in a steel grid to prevent their being damaged. Lights could be eliminated, since they apparently are never used . However, it has been observed that when the doors are shut, the load always presses hard against them as soon as darkness sets in. This is because the load naturally rushes toward the light when darkness sets in, which makes closing the doors difficult. Also, because of the alarming nature of darkness, screaming always occurs when the doors are closed. It would therefore be useful to light the lamp before and during the first moments of the operation .

3.For easy cleaning of the vehicle , there must be a sealed drain in the middle of the floor. The drainage hole’s cover, eight to twelve inches in diameter, would be equipped with a slanting trap, so that fluid liquids can drain off during the operation. During cleaning, the drain can be used to evacuate large pieces of dirt.

The aforementioned technical changes are to be made to vehicles in service only when they come in for repairs. As for the ten vehicles ordered from Saurer, they must be equipped with all innovations and changes shown by use and experience to be necessary.

Submitted for decision to Gruppenleiter II D,

SS-Obersturmbannfiihrer Walter Rauff .

Signed: Just

Excerpts taken from The Ethic of Expediency by Steven B. Katz, College English, Volume 54, Number 3, March 1992, 255:

We have seen that Just’s memo is based purely on expediency; the memo itself is a technical instrument (like the vans themselves) for carrying out the organizational “task.” I have also already pointed out how in Aristotle’s conception of deliberative rhetoric, expediency seems to be the primary virtue. Deliberative rhetoric is expedient when it serves its end, that is, political persuasion. The test of success in Aristotelian rhetoric is in the persuasion of the audience (the so-called “audience criterion”). As “the art or faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (Rhetoric I. ii. 1355 b26), then, rhetoric could be considered a means to an end, an expedient, a techne.

Hitler takes the ethic of expediency underlying deliberative rhetoric to its logical extreme. For Hitler, propaganda, the truest form of “technical rhetoric,” replaced deliberative discourse as the preferred mode of communicating with the masses:

The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses’ attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.

The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. (Mein Kampf, page 46)

Based on the ethic of expediency, rhetoric for Hitler was pure technique, de­signed not to encourage debate, but rather to indoctrinate: “all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan”; the reason, Hitler adds, is that “As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and the end entirely cancelled out.”

The ethic of expediency in extremis and combined with technology underlies the rhetoric of Just’s memo to the SS and the holocaust in general. But to some extent, technological (i.e., economic) expediency is the “moral” basis of many decisions/actions in our society that sometimes harm human welfare or imperil human life. A recent example would be the decision not to notify the public of the bomb threat to Pan Am Airlines to keep the airlines operating; in December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded over Locherbee, Scotland, killing all two hundred and seventy people on board. Ethically speaking, the difference is only one of degree, not kind. The decision not to notify the public was a “systems decision,” concerned more with the “efficient” operation of the transportation system than with the people the system is supposed to serve. In any highly bureaucratic, technological, capitalistic society, it is often the human being who must adapt to the system which has been developed to perform a specific function, and which is thus always necessarily geared toward the continuance of its own efficient operation.

Michel Foucault, French Philosopher:

‘Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements.

‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A ‘regime’ of truth.

In reference to the above literature on power, truth making, and expedition in our work, I would like to pose a few questions to readers:

How can people redefine certain individuals as addicts? I believe this is a dehumanizing term, one filled with semantic technique that is designed to reduce humans to a single characteristic: weak-minded. Those with addictions are so much more than this simplistic term.

Why are highly addictive drugs given out without an repercussions for the harm they do? I believe this expedites a system we all believe is based on scientific reason: life should never include pain of any kind, and we should trust the system engineers overseeing pharmaceutical science.

What would change if addiction were not a crime? I believe those suffering would speak up and not run in fear: giving over one’s whole body to be controlled and monitored in locked facilities make people afraid to talk.

What are the terms used by technical professionals concerning addiction? Disease, rehabilitation, patients, beds, treatment facilities, mental illness, and impulsivity.

How much money is involved in making, incarcerating, and treating people with addictions? If addiction was completely gone tomorrow, our economy would plummet. Pharmaceutical companies, lawyers, law enforcers, prison guards, counseling center staff, in patient facility employees and investors, and anyone who makes a profit off making or controlling humans with addictions would be out of an income.

Why are those with addictions so uninvolved in this system? I believe they would make sure they were not boxed without lights, were not transported without being the driver, were not defined by unfeeling scientists, and were not tattooed with a criminal record.

Why do addiction treatment facilities advertise so heavily yet so exclusively? They are tied to profit. They are business-minded. So, their rhetoric must be designed to get people with insurance into their beds and paying their therapists.

Do addiction businesses pay to lobby against pharmaceutical companies? I doubt it.

I believe we need to redefine ourselves, our loved ones, and the terms used to describe what is happening.

I refuse to say addiction is a disease—adisorderedorincorrectlyfunctioningorgan,part,structure,orsystemofthebodyresultingfromtheeffectofgeneticordevelopmentalerrors,infection,poisons,nutritionaldeficiencyorimbalance. I don’t have a simple term because the whole problem isn’t simple. We need to let people define themselves.

I believe we need to stop expediting how we deal with addiction. Expedition: useful for effecting a desired result; suited to the circumstances or the occasion; advantageous; convenient; based on or offering what is of use or advantage rather than what is right or just; guided by self-interest.

I believe we need to hear the voices of people battling addiction more than professionals. Addicts will tell us how it all began, what is keeping them down, how they really feel, and why they are turning to something besides other people to feel good. The professional community argues opinions based on observations, and only those with backing get published. This muddies the rhetoric being published. The addicts already know, but they are not published unless they are rich, famous, or somehow going to make someone a profit. We need to ask for, listen to, and value their opinions more often.

I believe all the rhetoric surrounding addiction is associated with power through humiliation. Humility toward the power of the addictive substance is quite different from walking naked through a crowd of onlookers. The whole “I am stronger than you, so do what I do” message needs to change to “I am the same as you in my humanness, but I really don’t understand how you must feel trying to fight this alone.” This should be followed by handing the person the power to cover their nakedness.

A gathering of voices is beginning!

Please add your voice, your story, your spirit (no matter how broken) to this project. In 2010 my wonderful son died of his addiction. He wasn’t a degenerate, but the world has labeled him one. He was valuable. They wrote him off and put him in jail although he never hurt another human being, only himself.

I want you all to have your stories told and the dignity of these men, women, and children reinstated.

Like this:

This was Matt on drugs:

In 2007 Matt called me on the phone, desperate, crying, in trouble. His trouble started with a stolen cell phone from a store near his apartment, escalated to a drunk driving, and ended with Matt burning the tracks off his arm in a paranoid frenzy.

I had enough of my 22 year old acting like he was 15.

So, after repeated attempts for him to take his stored memorabilia in the basement to his apartment, I just brought it to his place. This sort of ignited a frantic attempt to stay a child within Matt. He was so angry with me, so incensed that I would remove his stuff. According to Matt, he wasn’t ready to grow up. He really wanted to remain a child in his own eyes. I questioned why, quietly, to myself. Why would he not want his things with him. They were important to him; every scrap of paper with a number, every concert ticket stub, every trinket won from a fair had intense meaning to him. However, my answer from him was that he wanted to travel light and have his childhood home as his refuge. He just couldn’t get out of the nest. At his age I gave birth, had my own apartment, lived many states away from my parents: all the better I thought. Not Matt. He wanted to come to his childhood home and sack out, store valuables, and just plain be a child still. It was like he never quite grew up.

About a week after I dropped his boxes on his doorstep, around 7 or 8, I received a desperate call from Matt describing how the police came to his door and accused him of stealing a cell phone from a store. I don’t remember the details as he went on and on about his innocence, the police’s hate for him, the circumstantial case they had, and how they confiscated the phone. We talked, I rolled my eyes, and Matt hung up. About two hours later I received another call, but this was different; he was crying. He had gotten in his car, bought a 40 oz of some dirt cheap beer, and drove around town. He narrated the story about how the cops herded him in a corner, pulled him over for no good reason, and asked him if he had been drinking. He said he had, which according to Matt was the fatal mistake. So, now he had a DUI and a theft in one day. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

However, the next events really pushed me into a fog as Matt was beyond consoling. He was talking nonsense, conspiracy theories and the like. It’s a bit foggy as to which happened first, the job loss at the local grocery store, which he worked at since age 15, the job loss at Walmart, the long span where he couldn’t find a job, or the friends that just stopped hanging out with Matt because some pills supposedly disappeared. None of this was Matt’s fault of course. All just looked like he did it, but of course, he didn’t, according to Matt.

As I sat listening to still another story of Matt’s on how he was the innocent citizen being harassed, I became suddenly very tired, very jaded, and very sick. I just needed off the phone. I told him we would talk in the morning because I was too tired to think and was not buying any of it. So, I hung-up. He called back. I hung up. He called back. I got very firm. He cried. The phone sat silent.

About an hour later it rang again and I let the answering machine pick it up. I could hear Matt, whimpering, asking for me to please pick up the phone because he had burned himself. Upon picking up the phone I received the most desperate cry I had ever heard to this day. He was so scared, so cornered, so desperate. Holding the phone and holding my head I asked quietly what had happened. The response was explosive. “Mom, I was frying a burger and the pan flipped! I have grease on my arm. Mom, I burned my arm. It hurts so bad. Oh my God! Mom, it’s bad!”

I tried to comfort him and give advice for burns. Thinking about other things as I was talking, I just didn’t believe that this was accidental. So, I asked, “Matt, did you do this on purpose? Kiddo, what is going on?” The conversation continued, fast paced, frantic actually. He was so repetitive, so emotional, so desperate. If I could go back to that day, I would have done things so differently. But, retrospect doesn’t afford experience. After an hour of trying to calm him down, I was drained and he was still a vortex of emotion. Absolutely sick, I calmly told him that I was going to hang-up, and in the middle of his crying I did just that. I hung-up.

The next day he came over to the house, about a 30 min. drive. He showed me his bandaged arm, which had a deep burn about 4 or 5 inches long and an inch wide directly over the inner bend of his elbow. My son had done it to himself, though he still held to the grease story. Hearing about this later from a friend who was there to witness the whole account, I now understand that he was afraid the police would see his track marks, scars from heroin use. I was so naïve.

That summer progressed with the same sort of incidents.

Matt would come by to ‘visit’, hang out on the couch, sleep in his clothes, wake up to make a few phone calls, and suddenly take off. He was often wearing dirty clothes, always wrinkled, and shabby. I bought him such nice clothes here and there, but he never bothered to change. Strangely, he never stole from me, always kissed me hello and goodbye, and always wanted to know about my life. I explained, but he never seemed to remember what was really happening with me.

At that time I had a beau, a guy, a proposal, and a hopeful new relationship. Things were moving quickly with my new love, and Matt was fairly absent. I would call and he would be in Chicago, or he would be driving somewhere far away. His life was like trying to keep up with a political campaign—one day this was the story and the next day that story was changed and neither had to do with reality. It was so tiring, so maddening, so draining. I just turned away. Such a mistake.

August came and a ring was given. However, being married before and a bit older, I just didn’t see the need to buy 100 people chicken and a dress that I wouldn’t wear again. Me and my beau decided to elope. The day arrived and only a few were informed because if you tell more than the necessary two, than the other 100 feel hurt for not being the necessary 10. The preacher arrived and the two witnesses, and one other not foreseen guest. Yes, Matt showed up that morning, stoned out of his head.

Matt had a large dirt smear on his face, which I asked him to wash, kindly. That was unimportant and with a flip of the hand he dismissed the necessity to look clean at his mom’s wedding. He did want to put something clean on though, and popped into a bedroom to take off his pants. He emerged only in his boxers. Mind you, the preacher, his wife, and the two witnesses were sitting in the livingroom sipping coffee as Matt crossed back and forth several times looking for a good outfit. Everyone was mortified!

The wedding moved down the street to the little church in our small community, Matt still had the dirt smear on his face. The wedding ended and my new husband and I went back to my house to begin our first day and evening as a married couple. Oddly, Matt couldn’t understand why we wanted the house to ourselves. He actually argued with me about staying there the night. After about a half hour of firm requests Matt left dejected, hurt, angry, and sad.

This was not the real Matt but a hijacked body. Your story may be similar, your own or your child’s. I am telling this story so that you can see what it really looks like, what it really means to be an addict or close to an addict. So, by no means should you feel that your story is that horrific, that shameful, that odd. It’s all the same for everyone that gets drawn into the easy feeling of covering mental pain by using chemicals.

Once Addicts Find Honesty and Love:

Matt’s mental pain was due to low self-esteem and depression. After his addiction escalated to the point that he was put in jail for planning to rob a pharmacy, Matt went into rehab. This center forced Matthew to grow up, look at himself, be honest, face himself and take responsibility for himself. I can tell you with all honesty that my son came out of rehab a man. For the first time he and I talked as adults, as friends, as equals, and as one soul to another. The year after Matt left rehab was the best year I have ever spent with another individual ever. It all started the day I picked him up and he said, “Mom, ask me anything, anything at all, and I will tell you the truth. I’m not afraid of the truth anymore.” Telling the truth freed Matt to talk, to share, and to feel free again.

The world after rehab and the freedom Matt experienced that summer of 2008 is my hope for all of you creative and sensitive souls out there that find yourselves looking for a chemical to cover the real you and make yourself more palatable to the world. I have spoken to many an addict, many a social phobic, and many a creative soul, and they all seem somewhat the same. Society has made these people crawl inside themselves for a safe place, a lonely place, a dark place that only feels good after releasing that inner self and becoming unafraid to express all those emotions and personalities.

Matt was now free mentally but jailed financially. In search of a job, I sent Matt to a city far away, strange, and cold. He once again was sucked into the pain of rejection, the stigma of different and the easy feeling of mental freedom for dollars. Who wouldn’t pay to feel good? How many of us would march before the world without make-up, without hair dye, without all those façades that cover the real us? Some people just don’t have that easy of a cover.

Moral of the story:

The truth is your best friend, your midnight lover, your clear mirror, and your salvation. If you or someone you love wants/needs to be free from an addiction, I know at least a big part of this freedom is the ability to be completely honest without fear. Consider the necessity of love in a human soul and what love means. Have you ever truly loved someone? Was that love a feature of control? Not love. Was that love a feature of being needed? Not love. Was that love required because a blood-connection was shared? Not love. (I don’t love my Aunt Mildred. She called me a brat and cheated at rummy.) Was that love the feeling of running through a field of flowers completely butt-naked and flabby loved, cottage-cheese thighed loved, short-dicked loved, bald-headed loved? Okay, that’s what people need! It’s the “I love you because I know you and you let me really know you, the real you, the human you, the workings-of-your-mind you. Thank you for letting me know YOU.”

I didn’t get that until just recently. Matt taught me that. I should have driven to his apartment and gave him a hug that night while laughing at his ridiculous excuses and letting him know that I still loved him. God taught me that. God has always listened and never asked a crumb of me. He even wrote me big letters letting me know what is wise and not before I was even born. Fat, ugly couples that have been together forever taught me that. I notice that couples that are not considered “beautiful” by commercial standards are so happy and not divorced. I also notice that “beautiful” couples are typically serial marriage couples.

After 48 years of life, the first half completely dumb, the next forth a bit durrrrr, and this last few somewhat salient, I would like to pass on the little treasure box I have filled to others. If I can save one addict, parent of an addict, loved one of an addict from missing that critical addition to a meaningful life, I will have achieved something with this blog. Therefore, I am not going to be all rainbows and unicorns as I present the truth. I find the rhetoric around addiction to be very vanilla on the web. It is also very sciency, if that is a word. Science shimience, addiction is a disease of the soul. So, try just yelling out the truth as the truth will set you free.

Matt’s story, journal, and sadly beautiful life has a chance to touch and change the hearts of millions. The people who knew Matt best want to help narrate his journals and life in an independent film project, which will reach those millions. Matt loved his journals for a reason, they tell the Truth. Your help can get this truth to the general public.

Please place this link on your social media, and please consider supporting this independent film project. We all should have our names on the credits. Imagine all the names we can add! So many of us are unheard. This is your opportunity to make our voices loud. Join the struggle to remove the stigma!

In other words, please show your love to Matt and all addicts like him by simply reposting.

Together, we can change the stigma, the reaction, the approach, the rhetoric, the whole stupid mess prescription drug addictions cause in our country, families, and lives!